Community organizer Phil Prehn, in 2009, by a vacant house on Oakwood Avenue: Fears that restricting access to a countywide data base will hurt fragile Syracuse neighborhoods.Peter Chen/The Post-Standard

For almost 20 years, Phil Prehn has served as a community organizer with Syracuse United Neighbors, a non-profit organization that works with city residents. Not long ago, members of the group became concerned about the deteriorating condition of a South Avenue property. Often, owners of houses in such awful shape tell SUN they lack the means to make repairs.

In this case, Prehn said, SUN put the name of the landlord into an Onondaga County property tax roll database. It led to an important find: The same person owned many houses in other neighborhoods. Those properties, SUN learned, were in much better shape. There was no logical reason for the owner to allow the South Avenue house to fall apart, knowledge that empowered residents when they sought help from City Hall.

“It’s hard enough getting some of these answers as it is,” Prehn said.

He spoke amid a civic debate that erupted Wednesday, when county Executive Joanie Mahoney said she had restricted some access to the database after a talk last week with law enforcement officials. Until then, county tax rolls could be searched online by plugging in a name, which called up every county property owned by the specific individual.

According to The Post-Standard’s Rick Moriarty, the web site averaged about 2 million hits a year.

Thursday, Mahoney said the changes are a temporary step toward a better solution.

“This is in no way perfect, and I’m very aware of it, but it was still a good thing to do,” she said. “I ask for patience and understanding.”

She met last week with Jeff Piedmonte and Scott Carns, officials in the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association. They told her criminal suspects may have used the database to learn the addresses of officers, she said.

The police would have been satisfied with having their own names blocked, Mahoney said. That idea raised a larger problem: If the names of officers should be blocked, what about prosecutors? Or judges? Or social workers? Or teachers? Or jailhouse guards? Or any citizen who’s ever had contact with someone who might carry a grudge?

If one thing has been made clear, Mahoney said, it’s the danger of believing any act of violence is unthinkable. For that reason, she said, she is blocking all names until a better system gets worked out.

“All the world has seen how bad things happen to good people,” she said. “I don’t want to be in a situation (later) where, God forbid, something happens and I didn’t (prevent it) because I wanted there to be a process.”

Prehn wasn’t swayed. He believes strongly, he said, in the constitutional ideal of free access to information. If documented reasons exist for believing the database has led to the harassment of police officers, then those incidents ought to be made public, he said.

If not, he said, leave the system as it is.

“This is a big thing, a big problem, for us,” he said.

Before the Internet, Prehn said, information about property owners could be much harder to obtain. If neighbors wanted to track the movements of a slumlord or a powerful developer, they had to wait in a government office while clerks sifted through stacks of paper.

Digitalization created a much faster route, a route that Prehn said is now abruptly gone.

Mahoney said the electronic check of any address will still reveal the owner of a particular house. But Prehn said there is no longer an easy way to discover if an individual owns many properties, a critical step in determining whether SUN is dealing with a serial slumlord or someone who’s overwhelmed by legitimate expenses.

Prehn sees it as a disappointing step backward, especially since his organization has often appreciated Mahoney’s take on city issues. For years, for instance, SUN worked in vain against the building of new sewer plants along Onondaga Creek.

After Mahoney took office, she reversed the plan and embraced a philosophy known as Save the Rain.

That hasn’t stopped, Mahoney said. She said Prehn “has devoted himself to making this community better,” and she does not want to prevent anyone from exposing slumlords. The imperative, Mahoney said, is developing a system that will serve the community while protecting public servants who might be at risk.

Prehn remains leery. At SUN, neighbors faced with civic challenges sometimes confront opponents of great wealth and resources. One quality, Prehn said, is the great equalizer.

“In the larger scheme of things,” he said, “people have got to have information.”

Sean Kirst, a columnist with The Post-Standard, will be away from the office until Jan. 21.